Steve Brestin

How blessed I was to have this godly man for 39 years. I’d love for you to see a clip Annie played at her wedding in remembrance of her daddy. You will see how he loved his children, how he laughed, sang, and cared. What you won’t see is how he prayed. How we are seeing answers: He prayed God would comfort me as a widow (my story is in The God of All Comfort); that his three daughters would marry godly men with godly fathers (all three, in the next three years, married pastors’ sons) and his prayer journal (which I know he didn’t really intend me to see) was filled with adoration for the Lord He loved and confession for the ways he feel short.

I wrote this shortly after Steve died — it may help you minister to others in high-tide grief:

Don’t Send a Sympathy Card

An invisible knife pierces my heart. Ever since my 59-year-old husband, Steve, lost his valiant battle with colon cancer, I’ve waited for him to call, to hear his hearty laugh – but silence looms. I long to talk to him about our five children – but he is gone. My body aches to be held by him in the night, to have his deep voice pray over me or to hear him recite “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” the nursery rhyme he often used to lull me to sleep – but I am alone under the covers.

Click here to read the entire story published in Focus on the Family Magazine.